“Are they only killed for their skin and oil?” asked Bell.
“By Europeans, yes, but the Eskimo eat them; they live on them, and pieces of seal’s flesh, which they mix with blood and fat, are not at all unappetizing. After all, it depends on the way it’s treated, and I shall give you some delicate cutlets if you don’t mind their dark color.”
“We shall see you at work,” answered Bell; “I’ll gladly eat it, Doctor.”
“My good Bell, as much as you please. But, however much you eat, you will never equal a Greenlander, who eats ten or fifteen pounds of it a day.”
“Fifteen pounds!” said Bell. “What stomachs!”
“Real polar stomachs,” answered the doctor; “prodigious stomachs which can be dilated at will, and, I ought to add, can be contracted in the same way, so that they support starving as well as gorging. At the beginning of his dinner, the Eskimo is thin; at the end, he is fat, and not to be recognized! It is true that his dinner often lasts a whole day.”
“Evidently,” said Altamont, “this voracity is peculiar to the inhabitants of cold countries!”
“I think so,” answered the doctor; “in the arctic regions one has to eat a great deal; it is a condition not only of strength, but of existence. Hence the Hudson’s Bay Company gives each man eight pounds of meat a day, or twelve pounds of fish, or two pounds of pemmican.”
“That’s a generous supply,” said the carpenter.
“But not so much as you imagine, my friend; and an Indian crammed in that way does no better work than an Englishman with his pound of beef and his pint of beer a day.”
“Then, Doctor, all is for the best.”
“True, but still an Eskimo meal may well astonish us. While wintering at Boothia Land, Sir John Ross was always surprised at the voracity of his guides; he says somewhere that two men—two, you understand—ate in one morning a whole quarter of a musk-ox; they tear the meat into long shreds, which they place in their mouths; then each one, cutting off at his lips what his mouth cannot hold, passes it over to his companion; or else the gluttons, letting the shreds hang down to the ground, swallow them gradually, as a boa-constrictor swallows an animal, and like it stretched out at full length on the ground.”
“Ugh!” said Bell, “the disgusting brutes!”
“Everyone eats in his own way,” answered the American, philosophically.
“Fortunately!” replied the doctor.
“Well,” said Altamont, “since the need of food is so great in these latitudes, I’m no longer surprised that in accounts of arctic voyages there is always so much space given to describing the meals.”
“You are right,” answered the doctor; “and it is a remark which I have often made myself; it is not only that plenty of food is needed, but also because it is often hard to get it. So one is always thinking of it and consequently always talking of it!”
“Still,” said Altamont, “if my memory serves me right, in Norway, in the coldest countries, the peasants need no such enormous supply: a little milk, eggs, birch-bark bread, sometimes salmon, never any meat; and yet they are hardy men.”
“It’s a matter of organization,” answered the doctor, “and one which I can’t explain. Still, I fancy that the second or third generation of Norwegians, carried to Greenland, would end by feeding themselves in the Greenland way. And we too, my friends, if we were to remain in this lovely country, would get to live like the Eskimo, not to say like gluttons.”
“Dr. Clawbonny,” said Bell, “it makes me hungry to talk in this way.”
“It doesn’t make me,” answered Altamont; “it disgusts me rather, and makes me dislike seal’s flesh. But I fancy we shall have an opportunity to try the experiment. If I’m not mistaken, I see some living body down there on the ice.”
“It’s a walrus,” shouted the doctor; “forward silently!”
Indeed, the animal was within two hundred feet of the hunters; he was stretching and rolling at his ease in the pale rays of the sun. The three men separated so as to surround him and cut off his retreat; and they approached within a few fathoms’ lengths of him, hiding behind the hummocks, and then fired. The walrus rolled over, still full of strength; he crushed the ice in his attempts to get away; but Altamont attacked him with his hatchet, and succeeded in cutting his dorsal fins. The walrus made a desperate resistance; new shots finished him, and he remained stretched lifeless on the ice-field stained with his blood. He was a good-sized animal, being nearly fifteen feet long from his muzzle to the end of his tail, and he would certainly furnish many barrels of oil. The doctor cut out the most savory parts of the flesh, and he left the corpse to the mercies of a few crows, which, at this season of the year, were floating through the air. The night began to fall. They thought of returning to Fort Providence; the sky had become perfectly clear, and while waiting for the moon to rise, the splendor of the stars was magnificent.
“Come, push on,” said the doctor, “it’s growing late; to be sure, we’ve had poor luck; but as long as we have enough for supper, there’s no need of complaining. Only let’s take the shortest way and try not to get lost; the stars will help us.”
But yet in countries where the North Star shines directly above the traveller’s head, it is hard to walk by it; in fact, when the north is directly in the zenith, it is hard to determine the other cardinal points; fortunately the moon and great
